TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - March 1, 2011) - Toronto Hydro's lawsuit against the OMERS pension plan, which seeks to overturn a decision that limits the pensions of hydro executives who earn big bonuses, is an outrageous attack on the pensions of hard-working Ontarians, says the President of CUPE Ontario.

"That Toronto Hydro executives are using the hard-earned dollars Torontonians pay for electricity to sue the OMERS pension plan because they want their ludicrous and exclusive corporate bonuses to count towards their pensions is outrageous," said Fred Hahn, President of CUPE Ontario.

CUPE Ontario represents the largest single group of workers in the OMERS Pension Plan which is the pension plan for municipal, school board, emergency services, Children's Aid Society and hydro workers. The average pension for a CUPE retiree from the OMERS Pension plan is approximately $14,000 a year.

"The hard-working school secretaries, hydro lineperson, paramedics and child care workers who are members of the OMERS Pension Plan deserve retirement security and shouldn't have to foot the bill for CEO bonuses," said Hahn.

OMERS, which is a jointly-sponsored pension plan, moved to cap executive bonuses counting towards pension payments to help ensure the plan was able to provide secure pensions for hundreds of thousands of Ontario workers.

"There isn't a school caretaker in the province who could imagine making the $549,910 that Toronto Hydro CEO Anthony Haines earned in salary and bonuses in 2009," said Hahn. "They don't want the hard-earned money they contribute to OMERS paying out pensions based on executives' massive corporate bonuses."

"This is another example of high paid CEO's who feel entitled to ludicrous bonuses and do not care if including them in pensionable income adversely affects hard-working Ontarians. It was this mindset that caused the economic crisis in the first place."